Georgia Davis Powers

Georgia Davis Powers (19 October 1923-30 January 2016) was the first African-American and the first woman to be elected to the Kentucky State Senate, in which she served from January 1968 to January 1989.

Biography
Georgia Davis Powers was born on 19 October 1923 in Springfield, Kentucky from a family of nine children; she had eight brothers. From 1940 to 1942 she graduated from Louisville Municipal College, and she was convinced by her local Presbyterian church to join politics as a worker for the US Democratic Party; she aided in Edward T. Breathitt's successful 1963 campaign for Governor of Kentucky. In the early 1960s, she became involved in the Civil Rights movement, and she considered Martin Luther King, Jr. to be a friend, confidant, and lover during her time spent with him in his march on the capital of Frankfort in 1964 and her attendance of his speech in Memphis in 1968. In January 1968, she was elected to be a member of the Kentucky State Senate, the first woman and African-American to hold that title. During her tenure as a member of the state senate, she continued the fight for civil rights and supported Jesse Jackson's 1964 and 1968 presidential campaigns. In 1989, she retired from the state senate, and on 30 January 2016 she died of congestive heart failure at the age of 92.